CategoryCOVID-19

Will we ever get back to managing MS proactively or is this the new normal? I saw a new patient with probable MS via video consultation this week. He was from a BAME background and I could sense that he has very active MS despite only having had two relatively mild attacks in the last 14 months; an episode of transient diplopia lasting a few days and a mild sensory relapse lasting just shy of two...

Hello it is Triska again. ProfB has asked me to talk about the anti-body tests that are out there. These are currently relevant to how people are being tested to see if they have had a COVID-19 infection, but the principles are the anti-drug antibody tests that we have been doing in the Lab Lateral flow test A lateral flow immunoassay, also referred to as a rapid diagnostic test is a simple to...

Would knowing that you were anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody-positive change your behaviour? The WHO and other public health agencies are trying to play down the importance of having antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 saying they don’t yet have the data to say these antibodies protect you from reinfection. Yes and no. No in that we don’t have data yet in relation to SARS-CoV-2, but YES in relation to other viral...

As you are aware that about 30% of people with COVID-19 present with loss of smell (anosmia) and/or loss of taste (ageusia). The loss of smell happens because the coronavirus damages the nerve endings in the olfactory epithelium in the nose. The good news is that it looks like most people recover their sense of smell and taste, but the recovery can take many months. At present we don’t know how...

Dare you disagree with Government guidelines? The following are excerpts of the new guidelines posted last night on the Government’s website. Unfortunately, people on ‘immunosuppression therapies sufficient to significantly increase the risk of infection’ are still on the list with no justification of what this risk should be. Based on the experience emerging from pwMS getting...

So yesterday we went through the process of how you can kickstart the immune response to target a viral response and looked at efforts to treat COVID-19. I asked if this could be applied to PML and in conclusion said NDG had done just that already. This was not in MS but in people who had low lymphocyte levels who had got PML. If you can remember from yesterday immune check point inhibitors. One...

Because cladribine and alemtuzumab are classified as immune reconstitution therapies (IRTs), and probably work in a similar way, they are tarnished with the same brush. However, cladribine’s immune depletion and reconstitution, and adverse event profile are very different to alemtuzumab’s and therefore cladribine should be considered on its own when weighing up the risks and benefits of...

The Space programme gave us a man on the moon , but in the process of that a lot of innovation was developed…like the Space Pen that I carry that writes upside down and underwater. Others include Artificial limbs. …Insulin pump. …DustBusters. …Shock absorbers for buildings. …Solar cells……Cold-Weather Wearables. …Foil Blankets. …Scratch...

As you know COVID breakfast is a light hearted look at the lunacy that is affecting us all. I made a little Joke about the spate of microbiome studies that have sprung up since COVID-19 arrived….However, this seems more logical than Dr Spock on Star Trek compared to the one that DrM&M told me about. The registered trial that I am frightened to talk about, is this one…NCT04361838...